Pierre Aubenque - Biography

Pierre Aubenque, Ph.D., born July 23, 1929 in L'Isle-Jourdain, holds the Aristoteles Chair at the European Graduate School EGS. Pierre Aubenque is professor emeritus at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV), a French philosopher and an internationally recognized authority on Western philosophy. Aubenque is a specialist in ancient Greek philosophy, in particular the philosophy of Aristotle, and he has written extensively on many of the questions surrounding Aristotle and his intellectual legacy in the history of the West. He is also the secretary general of the Institute International de Philosophie (Paris) and a philosopher-in-residence and member of the Scientific Council of the European Graduate School EGS.

Aubenque began his studies at the lycée in Toulouse and continued on to the prestigious École normale supérieure in 1947. He completed his studies at the École normale supérieure in 1950 and pursued a Fondation Thiers fellowship. Pierre Aubenque has taught at the University of Montpellier (1955-60), Besançon (1960-4), the University Aix-Marseille (1964-6), and the University of Hamburg (1966-9). Since 1970, he has served as Chair of Ancient Philosophy at the University Paris-Sorbonne (Paris IV).

Pierre Aubenque is widely known for his analysis and original reading of Aristotle's work. He underlined the fact that in Metaphysics, Aristotle presented a duality of two projects. The science Aristotle wanted to found is partially ontology, the science of being qua being, and partially first philosophy, or theology, a particular science whose most salient object is the divine. Aubenque's most important work, Le problème de l'être chez Aristotle (1962), grapples with the questions of Aristotle's role in the history of metaphysics, which were first opened up in the modern context by Martin Heidegger. While Aubenque was influenced by Heidegger late in his career, his work is intensely analogous to Heidegger's approach to ancient philosophy. Aubenque in particular is working toward a more vital understanding of Aristotle's project via a hermeneutics of the systematic interpretation and augmentation of Aristotle's thought by later metaphysicians. In his writings, Pierre Aubenque has demonstrated how the modern world picture in its ontotheological structure has emerged out of Aristotelian metaphysics; one example he gives is metalanguage. Aubenque has shown that the concept of analogy later used by Thomas Aquinas was a formulation that was not to be found in Aristotle.

Aubenque is also known as the French editor of the debate in Davos on Kantianism between Heidegger and Cassirer in 1929. The text was published in 1972 under the title Débat sur le kantisme et la philosophie. Pierre Aubenque has influenced a great number of students in his career as a teacher, and he has profoundly shaped the contemporary approach to ancient philosophy in France through his capacity as Chair at the Sorbonne in the appointment of professors in the French universities. Some of his former students have become prominent philosophers in their own right, such as Rémi Brague.